Monday, 1 December 2014

Local policing news

From time to time I get a briefing from local police. The recent one is particularly helpful and, with permission I enclose extracts for you. This briefing is from Ch Insp Richard Horan, Area Commander for the Southside. It covers:

Meadows attack

Halloween & Bonfire night

Festive patrols

Housebreaking

Smartwater crime prevention

Cycle theft (including 'decoy bike')

Legal Psychoactive Substances (legal highs)

"(We) have been keeping you
updated regarding the two serious sexual assaults which took place earlier in
the monthAgain, I can
confirm we are not linking the attack in the Meadows to the one in Gilmerton. A
male has been arrested, charged and reported for the Gilmerton incident.

The Meadows incident is still under active investigation with a team of detectives working
on the case. Over the last couple of weeks we have placed extra resources in
and around the Meadows area.Like
Halloween, Bonfire night passed off peacefully, with nothing notable within the
south area. We were exceedingly well supported by both staff from the City of Edinburgh
Council South Office and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service during the week
long initiative put in place to address anti-social behaviour. It appears to
have worked.

Our festive
initiative, which again sees our focus on the various corridors into the City
Centre through the South, to prevent and deter anti-social and violent
behaviour, launches today. Other national campaigns, such as road safety and
domestic abuse, tie in nicely with our own local priorities and will keep us
busy. On our local priorities, we have recently refreshed our local community
plans with our six month updates - I hope they'll be published very soon.

Housebreaking
remains a key focus. Whilst there have been significantly less domestic
housebreakings this year, with more solved, we are still seeing the same areas
targeted - specifically Morningside, The Grange and Liberton. We have refreshed
our own local action plan around housebreaking and are relaunching
"Smartwarter" as a crime prevention opportunity this week, alongside
increasing our targeted patrols up to Christmas. On the enforcement front we
have also made several recent arrests of individuals whom we believe have been
carrying out many of these crimes.

We also had
a great success with our decoy bike, which led us to charge an individual with
theft. This helps to increase our understanding of who is stealing pedal
cycles, and might just perhaps place that seed of doubt in someone's mind -
"this bike I'm about to steal might actually be getting tracked."

I recognise
a number of residents in the south area, particularly but not exclusively our
large students population, make wide use of bicycles and the theft of these
remains an on-going issue and of community interest. We will continue with
deployments of both the decoy bike and other tactics to address this.

Other
emerging issues remain the use/abuse of New Psychoactive Substances (more
widely known as "legal" highs). Understanding and dealing with NPS
and how they affect not just the users, but the public and public services, is
a priority for officers in the South. It remains firmly an area we are focusing
on."